1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ultrasonic shower cleaning apparatus of a double-side cleaning type which is capable of simultaneously cleaning both sides or surfaces of an article to be cleaned such as a hard disc.
2. Description of the Related Art
The assignee of the present invention proposed an ultrasonic shower cleaning apparatus for cleaning a surface of an article to be cleaned, wherein a cleaning liquid is ejected, together with an ultrasonic wave, like shower as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,241,162, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference. Such an ultrasonic shower cleaning apparatus 40 has construction shown in FIG. 4. The ultrasonic shower cleaning apparatus 40 includes a nozzle 42 attached to a forward end of a casing 41, a disc-shaped ultrasonic transducer 43 arranged so as to be opposed to a backward end of the nozzle 42, and an inlet port 44 for a cleaning liquid formed on a side surface of the casing 41. The cleaning liquid supplied from the inlet port 44 and an ultrasonic wave emitted from the ultrasonic transducer 43 are ejected from the nozzle 42 so as to clean an article to be cleaned which is disposed in front of the nozzle 42. In such an ultrasonic shower cleaning apparatus, an outlet port 42a of the nozzle 42 is formed to have a linear circular hole, and a backward end surface of the nozzle 42 is formed to have a conical shape so as to be tapered towards the outlet port 42a from its outer edge at a predetermined angle. A guide mechanism 45 composed of annular flanges 45a and 45a is formed on a side surface of the nozzle 42.
In the ultrasonic shower cleaning apparatus 40, since the ultrasonic wave emitted from the nozzle 42 will not be focused on a fixed point, it is not necessary to precisely adjust a distance from an article to be cleaned to the forward end of the nozzle 42 at the time of cleaning, resulting in the working efficiency being improved. In addition, the cleaning liquid fed from the inlet port 44 is rectified by the guide mechanism 45 so as to be ejected as a uniform flow. At the same time, the emitted ultrasonic wave is repeatedly reflected between a bottom face 43a of the ultrasonic transducer 43 and the backward end surface of the nozzle 42 so as to be emitted with increased intensity. As a result, an extremely excellent cleaning effect can be achieved.
The ultrasonic shower cleaning apparatus proposed by the assignee of the present invention can achieve the high working efficiency and the excellent cleaning effect. The ultrasonic shower cleaning apparatus is, however, developed solely in order to clean one side or one surface of an article to be cleaned, and thus cannot simultaneously clean both sides or surfaces of the article to be cleaned. Accordingly, in the case of an article to be cleaned, such as a hard disc, of which both sides are required to be cleaned, when one side thereof has been cleaned, the article is necessitated to be inverted so as to clean the other side thereof. There, therefore, arises a problem that such cleaning takes a lot of effort and time.
As the most simple approach to solving such a problem, as shown in FIG. 5, two ultrasonic shower cleaning apparatuses 40 are provided and arranged in an opposed manner so as to interpose an article to be cleaned C between them, so that both sides of the article C may be simultaneously cleaned with a cleaning liquid W from the two ultrasonic shower cleaning apparatuses 40. In the case where the two ultrasonic shower cleaning apparatuses 40 are merely arranged in the opposed manner as shown in FIG. 5, however, an installation space for the entire cleaning apparatuses becomes large, and piping and pipe arrangement with respect to inlet ports of the cleaning apparatuses become complicated. As a result, the installation condition is greatly restricted.
As a double-side cleaning apparatus which uses only a normal cleaning liquid without using an ultrasonic wave, a high-pressure spray cleaning apparatus shown in FIG. 6 is known in the art. The high-pressure spray cleaning apparatus 60 is provided with hook-shaped cleaning liquid guide cylinders 61a and 61b which have ejecting nozzles 62a and 62b formed on inner sides of distal ends thereof, respectively, and which have inlet ports 63a and 63b for feeding a high-pressure cleaning liquid formed on proximal ends thereof, respectively. A high-pressure cleaning liquid W is ejected toward both sides or surfaces of an article to be cleaned C from the respective ejecting nozzles 62a and 62b while the article to be cleaned C is arranged between the ejecting nozzles 62a and 62b . In the case of the high-pressure spray cleaning apparatus 60 shown in FIG. 6, however, since only the cleaning liquid is used, the cleaning effect is not high, resulting in a problem that cleaning requires a lot of time and a large quantity of the cleaning liquid.